Published By Times Herald

A longtime Bay Area rap label, long linked by East Bay law enforcement to armed robberies, drug dealing and murder, has been implicated in a nationwide drug trafficking distribution network after a four-year federal drug investigation, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Twenty-five individuals - including the CEO and numerous rappers associated with "Thizz Entertainment," the label founded by slain Vallejo rapper Mac Dre - have been charged on multiple drug counts of distributing Ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, marijuana and codeine cough syrup across the East Bay and the country, according to a federal prosecutor. The head of the organization, Michael Lott, 47, of Vallejo, who raps under the name "Miami the Most," remains on the lam, along with nine others.

Thizz Entertainment's business model was simple - sell drugs to finance its record label, said Vallejo police Lt. Ken Weaver.

For many in law enforcement, Thursday's bust marks the end of a dangerous few decades in Vallejo involving the rap label, which started as a street gang committing robberies and selling drugs to finance its fledgling rap careers and turned into a nationwide criminal enterprise, authorities said.

"The main players that belong with Thizz Entertainment now have warrants for their arrest for the drug trafficking trade," Weaver said. "The streets of Vallejo will be a little safer this summer because of this."

The bust also spotlighted the controversial history of Thizz Entertainment, including the murder of Mac Dre, who was shot to death in 2004 after a performance in Kansas City, sparking a brief Vallejo-Kansas City rap war.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a group of young men in a small Vallejo neighborhood called the Country Club Crest, or The Crest, across Highway 37 from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, began knocking off pizza parlors. The Romper Room Gang moved on to hitting banks, slinging dope and committing murder, police and DEA officials said, to raise money to fund "Romper Records."

"It was an explosion of rap music and rock cocaine," Weaver said. "That was a huge deal to us because it was the first time we saw such organization by this culture and it was new to us. We learned from them and they learned from us."

Many members were put behind bars, as police locked in on rap lyrics detailing and glorifying their robberies, including Mac Dre, who in 1992 got a seven-year prison sentence.

Upon his release, Mac Dre formed Thizz Entertainment. The word "thizz" derived from the feeling one feels while on MDMA, or Ecstasy.

The label blew up and put the Bay Area on a nationwide rap spotlight.

"Thizz, when Mac Dre was on the label, were a major factor. They were coming out of a transformative time in the Bay Area," said Davey D, Bay Area journalist and hip-hop expert. "It was a resurgence of having national attention refocusing on the Bay."

As Mac Dre and his label's popularity soared, he went on tour and played a show at a Kansas City club Nov. 1, 2004. As he left the club in a van, he was killed in a hail of gunfire.

Kansas City police named Kansas City rapper Fat Tone as a person of interest in Mac Dre's death, but by May 2005 Anthony "Fat Tone" Watkins and Jermaine "Cowboy" Akins, were found shot to death at a construction site near the Palms Casino. Bay Area rapper Andre "Mac Minister" Dow was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for their murders, and authorities said his motive was to avenge Mac Dre's murder. He is also accused of killing a prostitute who was a witness in Fairfield.

Lott, who was with Mac Dre when he died, took over Thizz Entertainment after his friend's death and produced albums for more than 60 artists, some who were arrested in the drug probe, including Gaylord Franklin, 32, who raps under the name "Geezy," Bruce Thurmon, 41, aka "Little Bruce," and Major Norton, aka "Dubee."

In July 2008, DEA agents found a confidential informant who led them to Lott, and an undercover agent made his first buy of 200 Ecstasy pills in a Vallejo gas station parking lot.

The agent gained the trust of Lott, who introduced him to the large distribution ring, focusing on Ecstasy with Transformers, Batman and Lexus emblems, but dealing in just about any drug, the DEA said.

After numerous undercover drug buys and hours of surveillance and recorded phone calls, the DEA pulled the agent in December 2010. During the year and half, members of Thizz Entertainment and its associates were slain and one was shot at by police in drug related activities, according to the DEA.

They began to spread the enterprise to other states where they made music connections while on tour, Weaver said. Drug shipments were sent from the Vallejo area to Oklahoma City, New York, Atlanta and Milwaukee, the DEA said.

The drug money is used to finance the rap label, he said, a strategy not uncommon to many young men trying to leave tough urban neighborhoods, Davey D said.

"Do my dirt and invest it into something legitimate and graduate," Davey D said. "It's a longtime formula that doesn't hold the stigma because it's looked at as bettering yourself and getting yourself out of danger. This is not an unusual story. I've heard that story lots and lots of times."

The story ended Thursday, as agents cascaded into Vallejo and other East Bay cities to serve arrest warrants on 25 Thizz Entertainment associates.

A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for May 4 in Sacramento federal court.